messerist
Member
Excuse my ignorance but my Wife showed me how to "remove" the memory chip from my camera and put it in hers and download my photos. I am not what one would call computer savvy in the least. So, where were we before my "digital episode?" I hardened the blade and tempered it and that was all covered in my last post. The guard is rough ground to shape(I cheated and used a disc sander at work) and the slot for the tang drilled and filed out. The soldering of the guard used to drive me insane because I did not follow the two key steps that ensure a good solder joint. A tight fit between the tang and guard and a clean surface...clean clean clean! I can not over emphasize that enough. The way I solder is to apply liquid flux over both surfaces to be joined. I used to use "Ruby Red" flux but have found that "Stay Clean" works just as well. They are available at most hardware stores or online. Then I take silver solder wire, don't ask me the gauge because I have no clue. I would guess that it is about as thick as cotton twine. Roll out about six inches of solder wire and light your propane torch. I use propane because it is all I have and it works. Now keeping the guard in place while you are trying to solder is the trick here. There are some gadgets that you can buy but I have found that a 3" chunk of 3/4" square steel tube with two sides sawn off about half way works to hold the guard tight against the knife. I slide the tang into the tube and clamp a vise grip on the portion of the tang protruding out the end of the tube. Then just clamp the vise grip into your vise or have some intrepid soul hold it while you heat up the tang and the guard to the melting temp of the solder. I once had some steel chunks I would clamp on both sides of the blade during the heating step to act as heat sinks and keep the blade from losing it's temper. I found out after some experimentation that the heat never gets hot enough to damage the temper on the knife so I omit the heat sink all together. You just have to solder fast and that requires that your surfaces are tight, CLEAN and fluxed. I have a video made by the late Bill Moran and I follow his soldering methods pretty much to a "T." When he applies the solder to the heated guard he does it from below. That is why I cut out two side of the tubing that I use to hold the guard in place. The two "windows"(for lack of a better term) allow you to stick the solder into the joint between guard and tang. If your metals are clean, tight and well fluxed you will see the solder flow upward and follow the edges around the guard. I now take a CLEAN, NEW acid brush dipped in flux and brush all around the joint and that also helps pull the solder up into the joint. As you can see from the photos the solder filled up the joint between the blade and guard and there is only a little to clean up. Sometimes for me there is more and sometimes less because sometimes I listen to myself and ensure that I have followed the steps to a good solder joint ans sometimes...well, most of the times I ignore myself and end up having alot of solder to clean off. I am glad I able to pull off such a good solder joint for this thread. It almost looks like I know what I'm doing. Next I will glue up the knife and get to finishing it and making the sheath.
